


All the Years Between Us

by HelloHeadquarters



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27904744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloHeadquarters/pseuds/HelloHeadquarters
Summary: It takes a while, but they get there in the end.
Relationships: Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Mirage | Elliott Witt
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	All the Years Between Us

All the Years Between Us

Back around again, here, to this place, and Taejoon is tired of snow. The coldness creeps beneath his skin like an infection, colours his blood pale and settles beneath his teeth. He doesn't shiver, he won't allow himself the luxury because his mind is focused and exhausted and he just so fucking done. He plays a game he can never win, a game he lost so long ago, and he wants to go home, and he's looking through all his memories to see if he can recall where that even is. 

The wind is unwelcome, causing flurries at his feet and he wonders why he even bothers. Time goes on and on, he gets older and nothing changes. Trapped in a cycle and he doesn't even know how to break free. All of them, over and over again, working for fleeting victories and bleeding their failures out onto the frozen ground.

He's sick of telling himself that one day he'll get out, find a life to call his own and feel better but he doesn't believe it. If he doesn't lie to himself he'll probably lose his mind, and the irony is not lost to him. The only person he trusts is the one who is never honest with him at all.

He's alone. Maybe he had a squad, he can't even really remember who it was. Octavio, maybe. Probably. Kid tends to fall first. All he knows is that there's a crowd watching with baited breath as he's up against all the odds.

He hears a gun shot. They're trying to goad him out of hiding and he sighs. Why not, he thinks. Why not step out there and take the hits and let this damn thing be over for another day. He stands up, knees aching in protest and steps out into the light. 

A shot glances at his shoulder and his rifle hangs useless by his side. He's not going to fire back. Not this time. He just doesn't care. 

He looks over. It's just one person, and he recognises the silhouette with a sharp jolt in his chest.

"What's the matter, Cryppy?" he hears Elliott shout from some distance, and he suddenly is glad that it's him. If Elliott can take some joy from kicking his ass and getting that championship then fuck it, at least someone will be happy.

He shrugs, knowing that Elliott can see him through his scope, and closes his eyes.

Everyone's watching. Why hadn't the idiot taken the shot?

He hears the sound of snow crunching underfoot and risks opening one eye. Elliott is mere feet away, looking at him with something like concern.

"You're supposed to fight back," Elliott tells him. "Its no fun if you don't."

"Its never fun," he replies heavily. "It never was."

Elliott sends out a hologram. It comes to a stop an inch in front of Taejoon's face. Even now it's remarkable. He's seen it a hundred times or more and yet he's still amazed. Elliott in a perfect replica, all made out of light.

He reaches out a hand, waves his way through the illusion. It winks and flickers away. Just the two of them again.

It always seems to be him.

He lingers in Taejoon's mind, like the coldness that surrounds him. In his head and in his chest. Under his skin. Taejoon doesn't know why.

He wonders if maybe he loves him, but he doesn't have time for that. 

Some part of Taejoon needs him, like needing day to follow night. Constant, unchanging, predictable. He knows that, because everyone else keeps showing him they will not stay the same, but years and years will go by and Taejoon is certain that Elliott Witt will never turn out to be anyone else. They will always exist in this binary system of childish mockery and the thing they don't talk about, the thing that means that one day Taejoon will need someone's help and Elliott will be the one who gives it to him.

He doesn't know why he is so sure of this. Taejoon trusts no one but he relies on Witt, always has, to just be. The world could fall in flame and Elliott would be there, a smirk on his face and a line, and Taejoon will not yet be untethered from it all. They're not even friends, and yet...

Elliott is the most important person in the world to Taejoon, because he isn't a threat. He isn't dangerous, and he doesn't want to hurt Taejoon. If anything he ever said ever landed somewhere terrible, Elliott would feel ashamed, and sorry. He never will though, because Taejoon would never say. 

Taejoon wants to touch him. He's cold, and Elliott has always been warmth. 

"Just end it Witt. I'm out of ammo," he lies.

Elliott looks at him, and Taejoon sees something new, something that makes him uncomfortable, and maybe it shows on his face because the next second a bullet splits his skull and everything goes dark.

-

He wakes up alone, business as usual. He's got tubes going in and wires coming out and he feels afraid. He's at the mercy of the universe and has nowhere left to run. He put himself under a target and now he has to live in it, and try his best not to die. He has never been so tired.

There's a steady beeping in the air, a rhythmic bleep ticking off the seconds of a life he barely has a grasp on anymore. Everything comes at him at a hundred miles an hour and all he can do is stand still and let it all wash over him, and pray that he's still standing on the other side. 

He aches, physically but mentally, too. He wants to get up and then fall to his knees, screaming apologies to the world, his world, that he wasn't good enough to save her.

He doesn't know how. He'd go through the motions but he doesn't know the steps and he's not sure if he's getting somewhere or going backwards and he's lost and alone and done.

The door clatters open and he expects Elliott before he even sees him because they go around and around. Whatever Elliott wants from him, or thinks he can learn, he has no idea. If Elliott takes his exhaustion with the world for a type of cool indifference to be emulated well, then he only pities the man. Nothing about Tae Joon's life is desirable, nothing at all, but it seems like Elliott is the sort of man who has spent his life on the outside looking in.

"Hey kid," he mutters, and Tae Joon raises an eyebrow. It's been a while since Elliott called him that. He's startled to find he's missed it.

"What do you want?" he demands, because whatever position Elliott occupies in his mind is not one to be entertained, and he doesn't know exactly why he's so afraid to let Elliott in but then he really actually _does_. 

There's no kindness in sharing nightmares. 

Elliott, he knows, doesn't have a perfect life. It's no paradise, but every step he takes closer to Tae Joon's bed is a threat to make it that much worse. Tae Joon wants him to go away.

He wants to know why he came. 

Elliott shrugs, out of words for once and Tae Joon is certain that something in the universe is off kilter. He's certain that Elliott is more than what he seems but he's also sure that Elliott hates that fact. Mirage is perfect, so why would Elliott ever want to be anyone else?

Real people hurt, but his illusions can be whatever he wants them to be.

Tae Joon feels sad at the revelation, but there's no room in his heart for sympathy.

"Thought you might want some company," Elliott says at last.

"Not yours."

"Fuck you."

He doesn't leave though. A brand new spike of whatever the hell thinks it's important enough to live rent free in Tae Joon's head shoots through him. He's consistently awful to Elliott for his own sake, and the man just takes it and takes it and takes it.

What kind of messed up idea of affection must the man have if staying in this room is preferable to being anywhere else?

-

His squad is top of the leaderboard. Its been months since Tae Joon was on the wrong end of Elliott's rifle and he's out of sorts. Elliott was supposed to be a constant, but instead he's been existing on the periphery of Tae Joon's life and he hates that he hates it. He misses him, misses the way Elliott made him feel like a person instead of a target for a few fleeting seconds because no one has been paying as much attention to him as the man for whom attention is a drug. He hates to be seen, but he feels something fierce and aching when he knows that Elliott sees him just fine.

-

Real life is the most awful thing, and the days that follow the death of Evelyn Witt are cold and grey and sharp. Everyone's sorry, everyone's so damn sorry but Tae Joon hasn't the place to say it. He keeps his mouth shut and hopes that not insulting Elliott is the same as condolences, and tries his level best not to think of Elliott standing alone at a graveside with only the echoes of his long gone family for company. 

-

The day he finds out that Mila is still alive is like being reborn. He's happy, and scared and wary and europhic. He wants to tell someone. 

Elliott stands beside him on the dropship as the landscape of Kings Canyon flies beneath them.

"We got this, buddy," Elliott mutters, and there's this brief flicker of doubt on his face.

"Damn right," Tae Joon replies, to make it go away.

-

He'd been shot to ribbons on the drop but Elliott had clawed himself free and somehow gone on to win the whole damn thing by himself. Tae Joon is so fucking proud, so enamoured and he wonders why the hell Elliott, when he'd seen Renee and the robot do the same a dozen times over but he knows.

He's known for a while. But those things are not for men like him. 

He goes to bed with an irritating sort of anger keeping his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. He wants to cherish Elliott. He wishes he'd never met him.

-

He leaves the games eventually. He never meant to stay. He leaves it all behind and moves on. Mila is a ghost on the wind and though they may never find each other again they survived, and that's all that matters. He wakes up in his little room, with the scent of cherries filling his senses and wonders where it's coming from.

The trees are in bloom on Suotamo, and he's home.

-

Elliott Witt leaves the Games because he's just too fucking old to keep getting shot at. Tae Joon watches through a camera lens and wonders where he'll go but he fades into obscurity and the public quickly lose interest in their darling. 

Tae Joon never does. He just feels hollow.

-

He's nearing fifty when he realises just how much he was in love with Elliott all along. It hits him out of the blue one day, but not harshly. He just looks around his modest room and sees that he's alone, and that the empty space there was never filled because he already knew who he wanted to fill it with. It's oddly comforting, to put a name to the weight he's been carrying like a guilty secret for so long.

He shrugs, and carries on with his day.

-

A few months later he's on Solace, stretching his legs now that he's a distant memory in the Syndicate's mind when he sees Elliott on the street. He's walking in step beside a woman Tae Joon doesn't know and suddenly he's back there, frozen tundra beneath his feet as Elliott looks at him like he wishes he didn't have to do the things he did. He's a scared, terrified thing again when Elliott spots him.

The woman walks off and Tae Joon watches her disappear into a shop as Elliott draws closer.

"Hey kid," Elliott says from beneath his greying curls.

Tae Joon smiles. He hasn't done that in ages. The synthetics on his skin have been removed and replaced with something less obvious but he still feels the pull of all the parts of himself that are not real.

"Hey yourself, old man."

Elliott grins and Tae Joon feels that feeling, the one he'd lived with like a scar for so long rise up and he realises that for him, Elliott Witt was his one great romance, the one got away without ever being his in the first place. 

He holds out his hand.

Elliott pulls him into a hug.

-

They keep in touch. Tae Joon finds out a lot of things, that Elliott never married and that the woman he was with that day was the fiance of one his brothers so many years ago. He feels the pull like a force but he can't seem to ask.

Could we be something? Do you want that? He still does, even after all these years.

-

Elliott kisses him almost by accident. They're at his place, a modest shrine to the man Elliott made and who died the day he left the Games, and all Tae Joon does is lean a little closer because years of gunfire have done a number on his hearing when Eliott captures his lips with his own. Tae Joon doesn't give him the chance to apologise, and kisses him back instead, and for the first time in a long time he _feels_.

He spent so long waiting for Elliott Witt. He's not planning on letting him go.


End file.
